


The River Climbing Up The Mountain

by spinsters_grave



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (Thor Voice) help him, Alternate Universe - Enchanted Forest, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Fantasy, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Shiro (Voltron) Needs a Hug, Shiro (Voltron) is Confirmed Disaster Gay, Shiro (Voltron) is a Mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 15:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15146015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinsters_grave/pseuds/spinsters_grave
Summary: monks·hoodˈməNGksho͝odnounan aconite with blue or purple flowers. the upper sepal of the flower covers the topmost petals, giving a hoodlike appearance.chivalry, knight-errantry.if you knew what was waiting for you when you left for the last time, you'd leave still, and you would know you would be happyyou are given heartbreak and misery and you are still suffering from the pain of it all but you are rising, child, you are rising





	1. Devil's Helmet

Early on a dew-covered morning, a knight of a far distant land and time wearily begins his search anew. 

 

Everyone knows you never find the same unicorn twice, if you were lucky enough to find a unicorn in the first place. Shiro is inclined to think of this quest as folly; though it’s nice to not be in the castle, and to have the world fresh at his fingertips. 

 

He walks through an empty city. No one stays in the cities anymore, not since the plants had taken over. Not any people, of course, though who knows what unicorns ever did. Maybe they all live in the ocean, or in a city in the clouds, and every knight like him was a fool for having to stay on this mortal plane. 

 

The glass panes had all been blown out by the wind. The breeze whistles high above his head, dancing around the towers of babel, trying to knock the concrete down to earth. Shiro cranes his head as he wanders through the city, at the faded billboards and dead screens that hang halfway down the buildings they were tethered to. He doesn’t fear an attack. No one except himself is stupid enough to wander through here. 

 

The suburbs, as he approaches, are another matter entirely. Those paper buildings host people who can’t let go of the past, who wear old clothes and look at old posters and cook old food over open fires in the middle of the kitchen floor. Shiro doesn’t trust them. Doesn’t know what they can do. Still, there’s something tantalizing about the whole situation the squatters were in. It’s so different from Shiro’s life. Those people have probably never seen a real knight before. Not that Shiro looks like a real knight, lacking armor or a horse. 

 

His goal is to find the unicorn, not to hang with some drugged-up squatters in the ruined suburbs of a ruined city. He’s  _ better _ than this, he’s better than these addicts—and yet he still finds his feet carrying him closer to the fenced in houses, drawn by the faint sounds of life within. It has been awhile since he had seen another person. Heard another person. 

 

The first house has an older woman with seven cats on the porch alone (Shiro spent time petting them after he was kicked out) and a mean right hook. Which isn’t quite the experience Shiro had wanted for his first human interaction after two weeks of endless forest, but it’s nice to finally hear a voice other than his, even if it’s screaming at him. 

 

The second house is empty, and Shiro (with a cat in his arms that would not leave him behind) stands in a decrepit bedroom, spaceships and planets on the bedspread. He watches the dust motes with an empty gaze. This feels like an intrusion. This bedroom must have been empty, abandoned for decades. 

 

The third house has a guy smoking on the porch, his close cropped hair almost the same shade of brown as his skin, lounging in a sweaty wife beater and jeans. He looks at Shiro with hooded eyes and flat lips, bringing the cigarette to his mouth over and over again, unlit, useless. Shiro watches him watch him in return, neither of them saying a word until another man comes out and sees Shiro.

 

“Hey, stranger,” the larger guy says with surprise. “Haven’t seen you around here. Is that one of Inada’s cats?”

 

Shiro looks at the cat, who had started kneading its paws into his shoulder. “I don’t know.”

 

“I think so,” the first guy, the not-smoking guy, says. “She’s the only one with any cats around here.”

 

“That’s ‘cause she’s crazy,” the second guy says. 

 

“Do you…” Shiro begins, almost  _ nervous _ about what these not smoking, yet cigarette-laden people thought of him, “... have any tea?”

 

They’re too far away for Shiro to really see their facial expressions, but they look at each other and shrug, so Shiro takes that to mean well. They seem like good people. Saner than he expected from the stories he had been told. They aren’t inclined to throw him out on his ear with seven skittish cats for company, either. 

 

“Sure,” the second guy says. “Come on in. I’m Hunk. This is Lance. Tell us your story, stranger.”

 

Shiro follows Hunk inside to the dim house. The sun had peaked an hour or so ago, and it was still incredibly bright outside. Though light does reach into the house, it’s still cool and dark, and Shiro’s visibility is down for the time it took to readjust. Lance follows them in. His unsmoked cigarette has disappeared. 

 

“We have oolong,” Hunk says as he wanders into a kitchen off the main hallway. “Jasmine, rose. Lance likes floral, but I can scrounge up earl gray if you really need it.”

 

“I just need something to drink,” Shiro softly confesses, waiting for Lance to sit at the plain wooden table before setting the cat down. It winds around his legs and headbutts him, not willing to let Shiro go. “I’ve been… travelling.”

 

“Travelling,” Hunk repeats, like he knows exactly what Shiro means by the word. “Uh-huh. Please, sit down. You must be exhausted.”

 

Despite the plainness of the furniture, it feels so good to sit on something with back support again, and Shiro sighs in relief. Quietly. Neither Hunk nor Lance show any sign of hearing him. The cat jumps into his lap and makes itself at home. Shiro resigns himself to petting it. 

 

“Tell us about your travels,” Lance says, leaning his crossed arms on the table. His back is hunched at an angle that cannot be comfortable. “You look like a guy with a lot of stories.”

 

“It’s the arm, isn’t it,” Shiro says, with a wry grin aimed at Lance. He waves his right arm, which was cut off at the elbow, around. “Plenty of people ask about the arm. Don’t worry about it.”

 

He catches Lance looking a bit ashamed, a blink hiding his averted gaze. “Yeah. I mean, the whole….” He waves a hand in Shiro’s general direction. “You. You just look like you have stories to tell. They’re bursting out at your seams.”

 

Hunk joins them at the table, a pot of tea slowly boiling over an open fire in the corner of the kitchen. “Lance is right. Tell us about yourself, stranger.”

 

“My name is Shiro,” Shiro says, willfully dropping the titles associated with his full name. “I’m from out of town. I’ve been looking for something important for some time now, almost two weeks if I’m right. This is, uh, it’s my first time sitting down in an actual chair since I left.” He reaches behind him to grasp the back of the chair. 

 

“Way to be as vague as possible,” Lance says, his voice incredulous. “Who told you how to tell stories? I’m going to do them a favor and sock them a new one.”

 

“Sorry,” Shiro replies, though everyone knows he isn’t sorry at all. “Stories were never my strong suit.”

 

Lance smirks, something that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Then what is your strong suit? Someone like you has got to have at least one. I’m guessing survivalism. Something with strength and intelligence. Something that lets you support yourself for a long time.”

 

If only they knew. Shiro contemplates; he thinks about the month spent in the woods surrounding the castle, always close enough to touch his home but honor-bound to never even glance in that direction. The hours spent sparring and learning, building his strength and intelligence; it must have added up to become years, at the very least. But these aren’t his strong suit. 

 

“Drive,” Shiro decides. “I have drive.”

 

“Drive,” Lance repeats, raising an eyebrow, as the kettle in the corner whistles. They fall silent as Hunk goes over and pours the tea into three mugs. None of them match, and Shiro gazes at his plain green cup as the cat on his lap sniffs at the steam curling out from the top.

 

“Thank you,” Shiro says to Hunk. The cat follows the cup as far as it can, until it has its paws on Shiro’s chest and he has to hold it above his head. The cat gives up after a second, and Shiro savors the tea’s aromatic flavor. 

 

“Why are you wandering around here? We can’t have what you’re looking for,” Hunk says, swirling his tea around his cup. “Unless you’re looking for moonshine and crack, ‘cause we’ve got plenty of that. Not us, personally,” he says hastily. “Other people around here. The closest thing we have to drugs are Lance’s cigarettes.”

 

“I’m not looking for drugs,” Shiro says, blowing over his tea to cool it down. He looks at Hunk and Lance over the top of his cup. “If I told you what I was looking for, would you promise to keep it a secret? Never to tell anyone I was here?”

 

The two look at each other, both trying hard to disguise their skepticism. “Sure,” Lance says, a smirk on his face. 

 

“I’m looking for a unicorn,” Shiro says. He isn’t offended at their skepticism. He must sound absolutely crazy, even crazier than the people that lived here, because he seemed so sane before. 

 

The two in front of him were silent, but the smirks had slipped off of their faces. “A unicorn,” Hunk says, and takes a sip of his tea. 

 

“I’ve seen a unicorn once,” Lance says, watching the tea in his cup with laser focus. Hunk rolls his eyes. “Seriously. Hunk doesn’t believe me, but I totally saw it.”

 

“You were high off your mind and when I looked at where you wanted me to look it was gone,” Hunk says in the most unimpressed voice Shiro has ever heard. “This was back when Lance was hanging out with bad influences. Before we really started hanging out together.”

 

“No need for a life story, Hunk,” Lance says, embarrassed. “I might have been high, but I know what I saw. It looked at me. You just didn’t look when you should have. Unicorns only show themselves to people who deserve it, and  _ I _ deserved it.” He preens. 

 

Shiro takes another sip of his tea. “We had a unicorn in the castle zoo,” he says, allowing the two strangers to hear his story. 

 

“I already have so many questions,” Lance says immediately, not allowing Shiro to continue his train of thought. “What castle? How were you able to catch a unicorn?”

 

“It wasn’t me,” Shiro replies. “Almost twenty years ago, two knights from my castle went out and brought back a unicorn. They never said how they got it, and they died a couple weeks later, so it wasn’t like anyone was going to try again.”

 

Shiro remembered when they died, though it was an old memory from when he was very little, and it felt like a dream when it was happening even then. He remembered peering around a woman’s legs, watching a man pant and cry for breath on a table, surrounded by bottles and plants. The skirt in his hands was rough, woven from wool, and he watched with wet eyes as the man on the table choked on pure air. A woman placed warm hands on his back and shooed him out of the room.

 

The unicorn stayed in the back corner of its enclosure and didn’t come out for anyone. It watched the outside world with deep purple eyes and never ate anything. Apples rotted in buckets close to the door, and someone finally made enchanted apple cider, pretending proximity to the unicorn gave the cider magical properties. Long life. Health. As far as Shiro knew, it did nothing. 

 

“What happened to the unicorn?” Lance says, bringing Shiro back to the present. The cat on his lap helps, stretching and digging its claws into Shiro’s thighs. “It didn’t stay in your zoo.”

 

“It wasn’t  _ my _ zoo,” Shiro says, bristling slightly. “It was the castle’s. I just lived there.”

 

“It didn’t stay in  _ the _ zoo,” Lance says, rolling his eyes. 

 

Shiro pauses, sipping the tea. If he keeps doing this, he is going to run out of tea to sip when he needs to think. “It did not stay in the zoo,” he says, confirming Lance’s statement. “I set it free. And now I have to get it back.”

 

“By  _ yourself?” _ Hunk asks, his eyes wide. “You have to get a whole entire unicorn back to your castle  _ yourself, _ when it’s certain to kill you if it sees you again?”

 

Shiro scoffs. “It won’t kill me.”

 

“That’s what happens to people who see the same unicorn twice!” Hunk exclaims. “It stabs you with its horn and you die!”

 

“That’s an urban legend,” Lance says.

 

“That’s what happened to Mr Cadia,” Hunk shoots back. “You heard the stories.”

 

“We only know he was stabbed in his backyard. No one even  _ saw _ the unicorn.”

 

“It wasn’t a knife wound! Knife wounds look different.”

 

Shiro waits for them to bicker themselves out. This sounded like an old argument, one that was rehashed at least every week. Every time unicorns were brought up. He has nothing to contribute, and is content to let the argument be spun out again in front of his eyes. 

 

The conversation peters out eventually, and Shiro has finished his tea and pets the cat. 

 

“Thank you very much for the tea,” he says, and makes to stand. 

 

“Stay a while,” Lance says, catching his arm. “You must be exhausted. Stay the night.”

 

“I can’t intrude,” Shiro says, scooping the cat into his arms and rising. “I can’t.”

 

“You can,” Hunk says, rising with Shiro. “Really.”

 

“I shouldn’t,” Shiro tells them instead, the cat in his arms swishing its tail back and forth. “You’ve already given me your tea and your company. I don’t have anything to give you in return.”

 

“Give us  _ your  _ company, your stories,” Lance replies. “Tell us about your hair, your— _ the _ castle, your scar.” He crooks a finger over the bridge of his nose, and Shiro grimaces. 

 

“I have a duty,” he says weakly, knowing how flimsy the argument is. “This has been nice, truly it has been, but I must continue my search. My people depend on it.”

 

Hunk and Lance look at each other, then sigh. “Well, we can’t keep you,” Hunk says. He goes to Shiro and lays a hand on his shoulder. “I wish you luck with your unicorn. I hope you don’t die.”

 

“Thanks,” Shiro says, hesitates, “I hope I don’t die either.”

 

They smirk at each other, the three of them, pretending it was dark humor. Dark humor over crushing realizations. Shiro doesn’t want to die, doesn’t even want to search for this dumb unicorn. If he could, he would stay with Hunk and Lance, telling them about his life, watching Lance smoke his unlit cigarettes. But his oath is worth more than what he  _ wants.  _

 

Shiro leaves, the cat curled around his shoulders, with the tea in his stomach a warm barrier against the cold world. Hunk and Lance watch him go. It’s a little disconcerting, knowing there are people at his back, but he soldiers through. He always soldiers through. 

 

The suburbs give way to overgrown fields as tall as Shiro himself, taller even, so tall that Shiro barely notices the change to forest. The cat jumps off of his shoulders and trots along beside him, chasing after a mouse or bird but always coming back to Shiro. 

 

He looks at it for a long while, watching its lean muscles work, its lantern yellow eyes roam over the dead leaves. It needs a name. “I’m going to call you… Nadie,” he decides. “It means nobody.”

 

The cat glances up at him and blinks slowly, then headbutts him softly. Shiro takes it to mean it likes the name. Or that it has no idea what he’s talking about. What did he ever do to get this cat to love him?

 

The forest wraps itself around Shiro. He’s sure he’ll never find his way back to his castle through the loose trees. Not that he especially wants to go back. There’s no one for him there, since his last squire ran away and his horse was given to another out of disgrace. Not that they’d want him back, either. The castle. Maybe bringing back the unicorn would make everything go back the way it was, but even as Shiro thinks that, he realizes how futile it all is. He doesn’t  _ want  _ to go back to the way things were. It never held any happiness for him. 

 

Maybe he could stay here forever, wander the forest and become wise. Watch how the earth makes itself. See how plants interact with animals, and try to fit into that as best as he can with his lack of an arm and cursed-white lock of hair. 

 

He reaches up to tug it, pretending he can see the roots. Still, there won’t be any black there. It is the product of a unicorn curse, after all. 

 

Shiro had freed it in the dead of night. He was more than a little drunk, he had rejected one too many girls, and he wanted more than anything to be free. Free of that place. Free of those people. His obligations. His duties. His secrets. 

 

In his drunken stupor, he stumbled to the castle zoo, easily scaling the locked gate. He was alone in there as a human, but the smell and grunts of the animals around him told him to cherish what freedom he had. It was all just unfair. 

 

He wanted to free every single one of the creatures. If he couldn’t be himself, couldn’t be free, then he could do everything in his power to make sure the animals were. Set things right.

 

He didn’t have the keys, nor were they hanging on their hook on the wall. Shiro, drunk as he was, wouldn’t be able to tear the iron bars out of the earth, though he did try for the bear, grunting and straining, sounding like a beast himself. 

 

His gaze landed on the unicorn. 

 

It had its head sticking out of the bars, slender enough to gaze at Shiro with one eye but with shoulders too broad to break free. When Shiro approached, he could see the red welts on the unicorn’s flank from it pressing against the bars. 

 

“Hey,” Shiro breathed, his breath stinking of enchanted apple cider. “Hello. You’re a beauty, aren’t you?”

 

He knew not to touch the unicorn, drunk as he was, though he desperately wanted to. The moonlight glinted off of the unicorn’s horn, and Shiro swallowed, imagining how easily that could drive into his stomach. 

 

It huffed softly. Its breath floated over Shiro, smelling of warm, wet grass and molding hay. Shiro felt a little brighter, a little less woozy. 

 

His foot hit a large rock. He stumbled for a second before realizing the boon he’d been given, then bent down to pick it up, fighting the overwhelming dizziness. It had a sharp edge and was heavier than it looked. 

 

Shiro smashed it on the unicorn’s lock, again, again, until it snapped open. It wasn’t loud—not to Shiro’s ears—but it spooked the animals. They fluttered and beat the ground with their paws. Maybe they were scared. Maybe they were hiding Shiro’s noise. 

 

The unicorn didn’t move, still breathing warm air on Shiro’s neck, its horn stretching farther than Shiro’s arm. The lock snapped off, and Shiro swung the door open. 

 

The animals ceased their whining and beating, and watched as the unicorn stepped forward, pawing at the ground, testing the gravel with its foot. It looked around, then up, at the waxing moon. It stared up for a long time. 

 

It broke its stupor and went around to the rest of the animals, opening the locks with its kilometer-long horn. They watched and waited, and Shiro stood stock still, terrified. The alcohol fizzing in his blood didn’t help. 

 

The unicorn finished the locks and trotted back over to Shiro, who couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. As it lowered its head, he thought,  _ This is it, this is where I go.  _

 

The horn was cold against his sweaty forehead, and sent a cool rush of rationality through his mind, clearing the cider’s influence on his thoughts, helping him see clearly, how the moon shone on its coat, the wise glimmer in its eyes. Shiro gaped up at it, standing close to the wall as it led the animals to the locked gate. In the space of a blink, they were gone, the gate wide open. 

 

When morning came, Shiro was in his bedchambers. The whole thing felt like a dream, so Shiro dismissed it as such for the short time before he saw himself in the mirror and the lock of hair that had changed color in the exact spot the unicorn had touched him. It was pure white, as white as the unicorn’s coat, the moonlight shining on it. 

 

Everyone knew what he had done. So now he walks the forest, searching for the unicorn. 

 

He silently curses it in his mind. The damn thing had negated the effects of alcohol. He could never drink to forget again. He will never forgive it for that, for the clear mind and rationality. 

 

He is so lost in his thoughts that he almost runs into the unicorn. 

 

It nickers softly before Shiro runs directly into its horn, and they look at each other for a long second, both with eyes blown wide. It seems Shiro interrupted it grazing the grass; green bits cling to its hairs and drip down in clumps the longer they stand there, just looking at each other. 

 

Shiro can’t even think of capturing it again. The forest is still around them, quiet; no birds, no bugs around them cause even a whisper. Even the cat is silent. Nothing moves. Nothing dares breathe. 

 

The unicorn blinks, looking just as confused as Shiro feels himself. It breathes softly. Shiro notes, out of the corner of his eye, the red welts on its shoulders from where it pressed against the iron bars. He winces in sympathy. 

 

“I’ve been looking for you,” Shiro breathes, the words slipping out with the air, unbidden. “Are you going to kill me?”

 

The unicorn snorts and stamps the ground with one hoof. Shiro assumes that means  _ I’m thinking about it.  _

 

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Shiro says. “I don’t want to die, but dying from you isn’t so bad of a way to go.”

 

The unicorn snorts and shakes its head. It turns and bolts, and Shiro is too dumbstruck to do anything but watch its white coat grow dappled with the shade of the leaves. 

 

Only when it is truly gone does Shiro fall to his knees and hold back tears; it was right there, in his grasp, and he let it  _ go.  _ He wants to yell, but that would disturb the forest.  _ So close.  _ The unicorn was  _ so close.  _

 

The cat headbutts his arm, maybe wanting to scent him, or comfort him, or claim him as its own. Shiro doesn’t know, but he calms down and sits on the forest floor and pets the cat until he thinks he can soldier through. 

 

He picks himself up, the cat still in the cradle of his arms, seeming very disinclined to move. They continue. It’s all they can do. 

 

At least the forest is beautiful. This far north, this close to sea level, it’s sparser. The trees don’t want to touch each other, and there are barely any animals, as there are barely streams, and as there are too many people too close by. And as there is Shiro, stomping over the dead leaves, polluting what streams there are with his dirty hands. He is an intruder here, he knows, with his human diseases. 

 

Eventually, he does find a stream rushing with cold, clear water. It’s something like a blessing when he lets the cat go and all but sticks his head under. The tea from earlier was the latest thing he’s drunk, and he barely remembers when he ate last. He could die, looking for this unicorn. 

 

Shiro sighs. An opportunity like that, entirely missed. He could have been done. But that unicorn—something about it, when he looked, wouldn’t let him do anything but see something beautiful. Maybe he just shouldn’t look. 

 

The sun is going down. He doesn’t need food, not yet, so he can sleep with just his jacket and the cat, which has found a bird to eat. It yawns and curls up in the small of Shiro’s back, on top of his jacket. It fell asleep almost immediately, but Shiro was up until late into the night, thinking of the unicorn. 

 

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because he wakes up to the cat kneading at his hair in the early hours of the morning. Well, what is left of his hair. The cat is going wild, though, with what little it had to work with. 

 

“Good morning,” Shiro tells the cat, then pulls himself into a sitting position. He can’t really tell if the sun is just rising or what through the trees. Either way, it’s time to start again. Maybe he should look for something to eat. 

 

He brushes off his jacket and slings it over his shoulders again. The cat jumps to its feet and rubs itself on Shiro’s legs; he pats its head real quick, making its tail curl and its ears fold back, and they set off again. 

 

The sun burns the mist off of the forest floor as they walk; the trees cast long shadows that Shiro knows to steer clear of. He knows dawn shadows are where night creatures lay down to sleep. If you stay too long in one of them, you’ll be a night creature too. Shiro thinks he’s not too far off from night creature, though, with his… everything. Maybe some time in the shade won’t hurt. Maybe it will make the forest creatures like him better, because he only has the cat as of now, and everything else leaves as quickly as he can look at them. 

 

He finds a good tree and smacks it a couple times with the only hand he has left. It’s younger than most of its companions, and struggles to shoot high enough for the sun’s nutrients. Still, it provides ample shade, and Shiro, exhausted though he just woke up, falls down to the dew-covered grass and extends his legs. The cat jumps on his newly formed lap, and he lets it curl up as it lets him pet its head. 

 

The dawn crescendos. Shiro watches the tree trunks brighten in the light of the new day, mechanically petting the cat, who purrs into his hand. He could live like this. He could live unafraid of death. One day. 

 

There is a soft nicker from the other end of the tree, and slowly, Shiro thinks, No way. No way is that thing here. No way the universe would be this cruel. 

 

He looks up to see the glimmer of a sharp horn edge around the tree. The head of the unicorn follows, gazes at Shiro with deep, purple eyes, its lashes fluttering and breathing heavily through its nose. Shiro’s hand stills on his cat as he looks back. Again, all he can think is  _ Magnificent. _

 

The unicorn backs up suddenly, and Shiro almost misses its absence, though he can still hear it breathing. He turns to look at the sun-lit trees again, watching the way the leaves shake in the light breeze, how painted onto the tree they look. He hears the unicorn nicker to itself, as if it is arguing to itself, the way Shiro talks with himself all the time. It’s supposed to be a sign of madness, but no one would call Shiro insane. They would think it, but never say it to his face. 

 

The unicorn snorts, once, and Shiro hears a very human-sounding sigh. 

 

“Hast thou given up on thy quest already?” a man says, and Shiro starts. “Thou hast only just begun. I would think thou brave enough to follow through, but perhaps thou art tired.”

 

Shiro scoops the cat up and stands: he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, what he  _ will  _ do, upon hearing a human in the forest. 

 

“I am tired,” the voice mutters in its rough baritone. “But thou art courage and honor in the flesh.”

 

Shiro rounds the tree to see the man the voice belongs to. He doesn’t know why he’s shocked. The man talks like he always imagined a unicorn would. And in his loose shirt and—breeches could be the only word—he glows in the daylight as much as he glowed in the moonlight. 

 

“I’m not,” Shiro says, and has to stop, because his voice is so unused to being used that his vocal box strains and he’s sure his muscles are torn. He swallows and wishes his hand wasn’t holding onto the cat. “I’m not brave.”

 

“Thou hast set me free, though at great cost to thee; and it was done with no thought except to help others,” the man—the unicorn says. He looks at Shiro with those same deep purple eyes, and though his coat was brilliantly white, his hair is dark as pitch. A thousand excuses as to  _ why  _ flit through Shiro’s head. 

 

“I was drunk,” Shiro protests. 

 

“Thou wast at thy truest self,” the unicorn replies. “I would know.”

 

Shiro has nothing to say to that, because it  _ is  _ a unicorn, and in all the stories he’s heard, they  _ would  _ know. He flounders for a minute, but questions bubble up anyway. 

 

“Why me?” he asks eventually. 

 

The unicorn sighs, then pats the ground next to him. “Sit thou with me for a time. Though my explanation can be but simple, I hope it shall suffice.”

 

Shiro waits a second, fearing a trap and for his life, but the unicorn waits him out. He doesn’t look at Shiro, and moves very slightly, as if to intentionally make himself seem nonthreatening. Damn him for acting as if Shiro was a frightened dog, but double damn him, because it works. He collapses into a sitting position next to the unicorn and tries to pretend it’s not a defeat. He’s supposed to be capturing this thing, not— _ cavorting with the enemy.  _

 

The cat steps from Shiro’s lap to gaze questioningly at the unicorn. He smiles, and laughs; Shiro has to close his eyes, because it is so pure, so jagged around the edges but worn smooth with time. It’s not the sound of bells, but something freer, wilder, and Shiro knows he can’t possibly hope to tame this creature. 

 

“Poor thing,” the unicorn says, tilting its head and lightly stroking the cat’s neck. “You have had a rough time of it, cat. My apologies.”

 

“What’s the matter with it?” Shiro asks with concern. He’s grown attached to the cat. 

 

“No, thou didst the correct thing,” the unicorn says. “This was crowded into a small space with too many of its compatriots. It struggled to find food, or a place to relieve itself, or a place to sleep that did not reek of piss. It is glad to be with thee. Does it have a name?”

 

Shiro smiles and reaches to pet the cat, still curled in the unicorn’s lap. “Sure. I named it Nadie, but I never call it that.”

 

“Nothing,” the unicorn says. “Thou didst name this cat Nothing.”

 

“There is beauty in a lack of things,” Shiro says defensively. His hand rests on his stump of an arm, and he drags his thumb along the ruined skin. “At least, I think so. But what do I know? Less than you, probably.”

 

“I am—sorry,” the unicorn says, as if he’s unsure of what to say. “Nadie does like the name. I do as well, but it surprised me.”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“Thou hadst acquired that lack the first time I saw you,” the unicorn says, “but the wound on thy nose is recent.” It’s an obvious change of subject, but Shiro goes along with it. 

 

“I was attacked looking for you,” he lies, easily as breathing. “They wanted my money or my life. I thought I could fight them, but they sliced me across the nose and took my coins.”

 

The unicorn contemplates Shiro’s words, still lightly scratching the cat’s neck. It loves the attention, and writhes even further on the unicorn’s lap. “Thou art lying.”

 

“Yeah,” Shiro says, but he offers no explanation. How could he say that he were branded for disloyalty? That his close friends and silent lovers held him down screaming, their faces stone cold, as metal bit into his nose? How do you  _ say  _ that? 

 

“Thou liest well,” the unicorn said. “Perhaps you could give me a name. I am in dire need of one.”

 

“Where’d you get that leap?” Shiro asks. “I lie, so I can give names?”

 

“What is a name if it is not a lie?” the unicorn replies, a question for a question, but this one begs no answer. “They can be traded and placed one on top of the other. They can be shortened and lengthened as the named sees fit. They are naught but disguises. It is foolish to think a collection of syllables defines a man.”

 

Or a unicorn, Shiro thinks. “Okay, I guess. So? What do you want me to call you?”

 

“If thou canst not call me the coursing of the wind through the trees, nor the dappled shade of the leaves on the forest floor, nor the crawling of the mice and birds and cats on their foraging, nor the ripening of the berries in summer, nor the soft fall of snow in winter, nor the sound of a tree falling with no one around, then thou canst call me something that is all of that, and more.”

 

Shiro thinks as he gazes at the unicorn. Naming him, he knows, is a great responsibility. It’s nothing like naming a baby. Babies take their name without knowing the meaning, the emotion, longing, history behind the word. The unicorn has lived long. Shiro can’t disappoint him. 

 

The forest has sounds Shiro has never noticed before. Yes, the rustling, and the creaking of tree branches; the unicorn’s soft breathing, the cat’s low purr. Shiro’s dull heartbeat, cushioned by layers of humanity, emboldened and strengthened by history. 

 

“Keith,” Shiro decides. “Yeah. Keith.”

 

“Keith?”

 

“It means forest,” Shiro says, and looks over—Keith suits the unicorn, definitely, falls into those purple eyes like Alice down her rabbit hole, as if it belongs there. 

 

“Then Keith it shall be,” Keith says. He rises, holding the cat in the cradle of his arms. “I thank thee.”

 

“No need,” Shiro says. “It’s only a name.”

 

“Then I shall give one to thee, in return,” Keith says. “Thou seemst in sore need of one. Unless thou hast one already?”

 

“I can always get another, especially by your hand.” Shiro rises as well. His legs protest, but Shiro doesn’t care to give them reprieve. “People aren’t limited to one name.”

 

Keith hesitates, and Shiro wonders  _ why,  _ even now. Then the unicorn speaks, and Shiro forgets himself.

 

“Paladin,” Keith says. “Noble, righteous warrior. It suits thee well.”

 

Shiro smiles. He doesn’t know why, but the name fits him; he feels it slip over him like a well-loved jacket. “Paladin,” he says, letting the name into his mouth, tasting like thick clover honey. “I like it.”

 

Keith is looking at him in wonder. He reaches up and cups Shiro’s face with the hand that isn’t supporting the cat. Shiro hadn’t realized how close they were. 

 

“It is nice to see thine smile,” Keith murmurs. “Thou hast been through much.”

 

Shiro lets out a shuddering breath. Keith is more right than he knows; all his life, all his life he has worked, he has suffered, strived for something he doesn’t even know. He smiles again, though it is pained. “Indeed.”

 

Keith’s hand falls from Shiro’s face, but his eyes never waver, staring up into Shiro’s own. “Thou couldst stay here with me,” he says so softly that Shiro strains to hear. “Thou needest not go back to where thou wishes not. Thou art free to transcend here. Free to be creature. Free to bend.”

 

Shiro finds the magic in Keith’s words, in his unnaturally purple eyes. The unicorn is close to his surface. Something inside Shiro breaks, shatters, into a thousand million pieces, and becomes something new—it was his loyalty, and now it is his loyalty. 

 

“Then I will stay,” Shiro says just as softly, his heart bursting with freedom. “I’ll stay with you. I’ll protect you from those who seek to harm you, I’ll fight for you—“

 

“Thou needest not,” Keith says, interrupts, “do anything other than give me thine company.”

 

“I want to,” Shiro says. “I want to protect you.”

 

Keith smiles, and he wants to say more, Shiro can tell, but the cat jumps from his arms and weaves between their legs. 

 

“Thou hast been fighting full through thine life,” Keith says. “I have seen thee—never forget, for I was there to see thine growth into adulthood, and I am still here. Thou canst rest. I shall allow it.”

 

Shiro bows his head, overcome. He rubs the stump of his arm. “I don’t think I’ll ever rest,” he says. “I don’t think I can.”

 

“We all do thing we do not believe possible,” Keith says softly. “Thou canst be true to thine own self. Must be true, for thou art in the company of a unicorn now.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Wolfsbane

They make an odd group, the three of them; a disloyal soldier, a cat named nothing, and a unicorn. Shiro doubts anyone he used to know still thinks of him. He rarely thinks of them. The forest took those thoughts a long time ago. 

 

They do little more than wander. The forest is big, and welcoming besides; Shiro knows it would never steer them wrong. 

 

They see a great many things that, earlier, they may have missed in their less open state; jagged tree stumps and misty, sunlight openings and abandoned shacks by muddy streams. A dark place. A very dark place. 

 

Keith is man half the time, horse the other half; he never quite loses his magic in either form. The human seems more invested in Shiro. The unicorn thinks about stabbing him sometimes. 

 

He’s human now. The leaves throw dappled shade on them both, making his dark hair a riot of different colors. Shiro wants to touch it. He knows it will be warm. The cat in his arms is warm as well, and seems to be sleeping, even though it can’t be comfortable bouncing up and down in Shiro’s arm. It makes do, as do they all.  

 

“How did you lose your arm?” Keith asks suddenly. Shiro isn’t as surprised by the question as he would like to be. He’s seen Keith watching his stump, examining the scars where the skin was sewn back together. It’s an ugly mess. Shiro doesn’t know why Keith keeps looking.

 

Shiro is quiet; he’s pulling his thoughts back together from the scattered corners of the world to where they had dispersed. Him, as a concept, had disappeared into the forest. His arm?

 

“Long story,” he says, code for “I don’t want to talk about it.” Keith still isn’t good at picking up that unwritten code yet. Shiro wishes he would try. He’s gotten better at modern language, though, and has dropped the ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ for now. 

 

“We have nothing but time,” Keith says, slowing to a halt next to a fallen tree half-buried in the forest floor. The remnants of an old path are close by, and Shiro knows it will lead nowhere. 

 

“True,” Shiro says, simply. He lets the cat jump down from his arm and a half to sniff around the fallen tree. Dead leaves crunch under his feet as he walks on and slowly stops on the other side of the tree as Keith. 

 

“It was a long time ago,” Shiro says, watching the light play on the leaves. “I only remember half of what happened.”

 

He glances back at Keith, who is watching him intently, with nothing to indicate he’s going to interrupt until the story is done. The cat flops onto the ground, rustling the dead leaves. 

 

“We were hunting a boar in the woods,” he begins. “My friends and I. We shouldn’t have. Hunts are something for people who know what they’re doing, but my friends and I, we were foolish. Bullheaded. We had just been knighted, and we thought we were… I don’t know. Invincible.”

 

“Is this the real story?” Keith asks softly. He may not be good at social cues yet, but he has an uncanny sense of truth and lies. Shiro would curse his name if he hadn’t been the one to give it. 

 

“No,” Shiro admits, “but some secrets I’m not too keen on sharing.”

 

Keith is quiet, and Shiro rubs his stump of an arm, lost in thoughts of cold stone and biting iron. No. Those are thoughts he would do well to stay out of. 

 

Shiro watches as Keith ducks under the fallen tree and comes back up twice as tall and a horse. He snorts. Shiro sighs. 

 

The unicorn waves its head around, and with the head comes the horn; Shiro leans back to avoid the sharp thing. He snorts again. 

 

Before Shiro can move, or think, the unicorn lightly taps his stump of an arm. Shiro gasps, his breath having left his lungs mysteriously once the horn touches his skin; this isn’t a foreign feeling, no, but it is strange. Not uncomfortable, but like he’s returned home after a long vacation to find his house empty and dim. It’s like what he imagines returning to the castle would be like. 

 

He winces as the stump of his arm prickles with pins and needles. Still, he cannot tear his eyes away when he sees something green shooting from the seams of his arm. It grows rapidly, and other green things from other places in his seam join it. It hurts, but not even close to unbearably so. 

 

When the green thing is done, there is an arm where his stump used to be, made of green wood. Shiro watches it turn brown and gnarled at his forearm, while the joints of his elbow and finely crafted fingers are still green, flexible, and bendy. And he can  _ move  _ it, this miraculous arm made of fresh green things. 

 

Shiro gapes at it. He raises his new hand and flexes it into a fist. It is… it is perfect. 

 

“Thank you,” Shiro breathes. 

 

Where the unicorn was, there is now Keith, and he says “you are welcome” with a smirking grin. “I thought you would be happy.”

 

Shiro feels tears gathering beneath his eyes. “I am.”

 

Keith waits while Shiro admires his new arm. The cat, from where it had been sitting somewhere behind Shiro while Keith was a unicorn, comes trotting up, weaving between his ankles and looking at him with plantitive mews. Almost without thinking, Shiro reaches down to pet it. Something up there is smiling down at him today, because he can  _ feel _ the softness of this creature, how it arches under his touch, how it presses its head into his hand. 

 

He picks up the cat and buries his face in its fur. His eyes are closed, and he misses the beginning of an adoring look Keith sends his way; when he opens his eye, however, the look does not leave Keith’s face. They both flush a soft red. 

 

“Thank you,” Shiro whispers again. 

 

With nothing more to say in the face of Shiro’s refusal to talk of his past, they continue on in silence. It’s a comfortable silence, of course, filled with birds chirping and the wind running through the leaves, all the sounds of the forest. The grass is cool underneath their feet. It is a perfect spring, so close to summer. 

 

At first, it is only a rustle in the bushes; no different than any other windy noise around them. Shiro, with all his training, doesn’t hear the footsteps, doesn’t imagine that anything was wrong. Keith, with his magic, only knows a split second before. 

 

The person leaps out of the bushes and lands on Shiro’s head. He screeches (though he will deny it) and drops the cat; being a cat, it lands on its feet and runs away into the bushes, curling up with only its lantern eyes to peer out at the world. 

 

Shiro rips the assailant off of his head from where they had been trying to tear off his hair. They’re small—tiny, even—and Shiro can hold them out by their very large hood and not let their feet touch the floor. 

 

The assailant, resigned to their fate, pouts. 

 

“Who are you,” Shiro asks. Keith stands silently next to him, and though Shiro doesn’t turn to look, he imagines a terrifying look on his face. The assailant looks at Keith and grimaces. 

 

“You’re a  _ witch,”  _ they say instead of answering Shiro’s question. “I saw the whole thing, you—you—”

 

They turn to look at Shiro fully for more than a second, finally, and freezes. “You—Shiro? Shirogane? Takashi Shirogane? What are you doing out here? I thought you were dead!”

 

Shiro looks closer at the assailant. Oh, crap, because underneath the short hair and the glasses, it’s— “Katie?”

 

“Pidge,” Katie corrects. “I’m Pidge now. I thought you—put me down! Put me down right now!”

 

Shiro, incredulously, puts her down. 

 

“You two know each other?” Keith asks. “How?”

 

“Same castle,” Shiro says as an answer, though he knows it is no answer at all for Keith, or anyone else he’s met outside of the castle. 

 

“You’ve been gone for months,” Pidge says softly. “We held a funeral for you.”

 

“I bet too many people didn’t show up,” Shiro says wryly. “What are you doing out here?”

 

“Looking for my brother! And for you.” She wavers, then launches forward to give Shiro a hug. He feels something wet pinprick his thin shirt. “He’s gone, and I don’t know where. He went out to try and find the unicorn when you never came back, and—” She stops, wipes her eyes, and turns her glare on Keith.  _ “You!” _

 

Before she can step forward, Shiro steps between them so he is the only thing she sees. When she twists, Shiro twists with her, always keeping himself her focus. 

 

She growls. “Stop! That  _ thing  _ is the source of  _ all _ my troubles. It took away too much, and it will take away more!”

 

“Calm down, Katie—Pidge—please,” Shiro says. “He won’t hurt you.”

 

“Maybe not on purpose!” Pidge exclaims, silencing Shiro. “But that thing brings a tide of chaos with it, and a flat sea of depression after that. Maybe not intentionally. Maybe it doesn't want that. But regardless, that’s what  _ happens,  _ and it can’t bring its wake of destruction wherever it goes anymore! I won’t let it.”

 

Keith is quiet, and then says, in the softest voice imaginable, “I’m sorry.”

 

Pidge viciously wipes at the tears forming in her eyes. Shiro wants to help her, but he knows he would only be smacked away. “What?”

 

“I’m sorry,” Keith repeats, “I’m so sorry. I wish it wasn’t like this. I do. I would find your brother for you if I could. I want to do rights to correct my previous wrongs.”

 

Pidge stares at him for a long while. Shiro is still between them, but has since given up on blocking her view; she won’t attack. She trusts in apologies still. 

 

“If you can’t find him,” Pidge asks, “then who can?”

 

Keith glances at Shiro, who realizes he had been staring at Keith this whole time; they share a significant look, and Shiro can tell they are thinking of the same person. Shiro wants to hold on to that significant look. It is something he wants to protect. 

 

“There is a witch in these woods,” Keith begins, his intensity falling once again upon Pidge. “She can help you find your brother. We will bring you to her. Right, Shiro?”

 

Shiro nods. “Anything for you and your brother. I’d do anything to see him again.”

 

“Leave that thing behind? Come with me?” Pidge challenges, her voice colored in hope. 

 

“Anything but that,” Shiro says. His voice is as sad as he feels, and Pidge falls deep down into the words. Her shoulders slump, and she says little more. 

 

The trip to the witch’s house takes a week, maybe more; Pidge is sullen and moody and barely speaks to Keith and Shiro. While she sleeps, they stay up, looking at the stars in silence until Shiro falls asleep himself, always after the moon reaches her zenith. Keith is always human. He says it feels right. 

 

They had met the witch by accident. She lives in an invisible house deep in the woods, in a marshy section thick with birdsong. They had stumbled into her property by accident, and once she realized they truly meant no harm (which included Keith turning into a unicorn), she let them stay the night and gave them food in the morning. Fresh bread had never tasted so good. 

 

Perhaps now they are at her doorstep again. She had given them specific instructions, of course. It was still hard. She is secretive, and does not wish to be burned. 

 

So Keith, Shiro, and Pidge loiter around the place where the witch is supposed to reside. It’s only for a little bit, until a door opens in front of their eyes, a dim and cool interior in the middle of the warm forest. 

 

“I thought I told you that you could knock,” the witch says, a broad grin on her face. 

 

“Allura, a pleasure sweeter than any dessert, thou art fairer than the rose in the sunset,” Keith says, a smile of his own on his face to match hers. Shiro is instantly upset, though he cannot tell himself why. He’s still upset. The mood will not go away, especially while Keith and Allura keep talking, exchanging compliments like flowers. 

 

“This is Pidge,” Keith says. “She needs your help.”

 

“Hi,” Pidge says softly, her eyes wide as saucer plates. “I’m…” 

 

“She’s looking for her brother,” Shiro says. His voice is more snippish than usual, and he ignores the look Keith gives him. “Matthew Holt. Can you find him?”

 

Allura, who knows exactly what is going on and gives Shiro a look that makes him flush in embarrassment, says, “A tracking spell? I can do a tracking spell. Pidge, you can help me. Give me your hand, please.”

 

Shiro watches the beginning of the spell with interest. After the plants had taken over, magic had become more commonplace; not too common that it is widely practiced, but everyone knows that it is concrete, real, a force of nature unlike any other. 

 

Keith touches his shoulder gently, as gentle as a leaf falling on the forest floor. “Should we speak?” he asks in a whisper. 

 

Shiro looks between him and the magic forming in the air between the girls. “Sure,” he says, just as quiet. 

 

Keith leads him away from the burgeoning magic. Shiro casts a forlorn look before he allows himself to be sequestered into a small alcove with Keith. He finds he does not mind this. Not at all. 

 

“Are you okay?” Keith says softly. “You seem upset.”

 

“I’m fine,” Shiro says on reflex. “I mean, it’s stupid.”

 

“I’m sure it’s not,” Keith replies. “You can tell me what is on your mind. You know this.”

 

Shiro tightens his lips, thinking. How does he want to say this? Not that he doesn’t want to. He does. But the  _ how  _ of it is difficult. 

 

“I wish you wouldn’t flirt with Allura,” he says finally, each word as carefully placed as footfalls on rocks, trying to cross a stream. “I’m a little jealous.”

 

Incredulously, impossibly, Keith laughs. It’s a soft little thing, of shaking shoulders and hands covering mouths. It’s directed at  _ him.  _ Shiro should be offended, even a little bit. He’s nowhere close to the feeling. 

 

“What,” he whispers instead, pretending to be indignant, pulling on the vowel. 

 

“You’re  _ jealous,”  _ Keith whispers, as if it explained anything. “There is no reason in the entire world for you to be jealous.”

 

Now comes the real indignation. “There are tons of reasons why I should be jealous. Allura’s pretty, and smart, and magical, just like you are! It’s like you two were made for each other. I don’t exactly fit into that equation. Keith plus Allura doesn’t have room for—“

 

Shiro is quieted by Keith’s gentle hand on his cheek. It’s cool, and combats Shiro’s rising flush. 

 

“You have no reason to be jealous,” Keith says again. His smile is gentle, if slightly mocking. 

 

Shiro sighs. Keith offers no explanation to his assurances, and Shiro doesn’t appreciate being laughed at, so the conversation dead ends. They don’t go back to watching Pidge and Allura work magic between them, but stay in the alcove until the spell is done, melting into each others eyes. 

 

Allura decides to go on with Pidge, her epic quest of brother-retrieval and the burgeoning relationship between them surely something worthy of a story. Shiro watches them go with something forlorn in his chest. It is, again, him, the cat, and the unicorn. 

 

Allura entrusts them with her house while she is gone. Shiro learns to do this magic on his own that she does naturally. His arm, and Keith’s magic, edges onto Allura’s sensitive potions and powders and spells, but they make it work. It is a delicate balance, but as they have always done, they make it work. They soldier through the mess. 

 

The cat curls up on their shoulders and laps as they rest in the evening. It’s almost domestic. Shiro reaches out sometimes to hold Keith’s face or shoulders or hand with his new arm. He marvels in the feeling of humanity. This is all so  _ real.  _

 

It is now that the world decides to shatter. 

 

Shiro has heard stories upon stories. They were the lifeblood of the castle that he grew up in: stories of love, stories of adventure, stories of the loss of hope and the regaining of it. Above them all, stories of unicorns; above that, stories of the previous apocalypse. 

 

It had happened long before Shiro was born, though no one knew the exact time. Calendars and years were a thing of the past. Shiro had learned to tell time by the passing sun, the waxing and waning moon, and the colors of the leaves in the never-ending forest. But the apocalypse happened a long time ago. When men were foolish and selfish and could not appreciate the world around them. 

 

Since then, the earth has been slumbering peacefully. But perhaps she was only waiting. 

 

It begins in the middle of the day. The birds stop chirping. That is what Shiro notices first. 

 

“Do you hear that?” Shiro asks Keith. They are out in the glade near Allura’s house, picking some plant or another that she needs for her recipe. 

 

Keith stops his movements and stands up straight. “Hear what?”

 

They are silent. The world is hushed around them. 

 

“Exactly,” Shiro whispers. “Keith?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Let’s get inside.”

 

The earth rumbles underneath their feet as they walk, then run back to Allura’s invisible house. It’s more of a pocket dimension, as she explained once, but that doesn’t stop the foundations from shaking and the ceiling beams raining dust and dirt on them as the earth riots and revolts. 

 

Shiro holds Keith’s small frame close. They’ve hugged before, it was as inevitable as the tide that they would, but this time is  _ more.  _ Shiro cannot let go this time. 

 

They are in the same alcove they were in where Shiro confessed his jealousy, crouched low to the floor, a tangle of limbs weathering the worst of the riotous storm. The cat is somewhere else, hiding under a bed or inside a closet; Shiro doesn’t know. He can’t spare a thought for the thing as he and Keith are tossed around and knocked off balance.

 

He swore to protect this man in his arms. He swore to the mighty trees, the sunlight filtering through the leaves, the golden dawn. He will make sure this creature is safe, at cost to his own well-being, his own life. He will not let the apocalypse get in the way of his vow. 

 

“Shiro,” Keith is saying. “Shiro.  _ Paladin. Shiro.” _

 

Keith rarely says his name. They rarely say each others names, really; there is no need in the forest, where they are the only two around. 

 

“Shiro,” Keith gasps, begs. 

 

“Keith,” Shiro says in return. 

 

“Let me go,” Keith says, curling his hand into a fist on Shiro’s chest. He clenches the material of Shiro’s shirt. “I can stop this.”

 

“No,” Shiro gasps. They hit a particularly hard roll of earth and bounce, still holding tight to each other. Shiro’s back hits the ceiling, but that’s okay, because he can take the brunt of the impact. 

 

_ “Yes,”  _ Keith insists. He turns his head to stare up at Shiro. “I am magic. I can stop this.”

 

“I swore I was going to protect you,” Shiro says. “I am not  _ ever _ going to let you go.”

 

For a moment, Keith is silent; then he says—so quiet that Shiro can hardly hear it over the revolting earth— “I love you.”

 

Shiro brings this wondrous creature tighter, impossibly, to his body; their heartbeat melds into one as the world crumbles around their ears, and as he whispers, “I love you too.”

 

Keith lets out a shuddering sigh that ruffles Shiro’s collarbone before the area is covered in Keith’s lips. It’s almost like a kiss. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Keith says, and again, “I love you.”

 

“I love you too,” Shiro says, trying so hard to press them into one person, “I love you, I love you.” 

 

He feels himself growing tired, and at first attributes it to being exhausted from this apocalypse; but the familiar feeling of Keith’s magic runs through his veins, and he is powerless to stop it. 

 

He drifts off to a warm, dark sleep. When he wakes—

 

He wakes alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's gonna be,,,,, fine


	3. Queen of Poisons

The earth is still now. Perhaps she will be still forever, though there are still the billions of years left until the sun itself riots on its own. 

 

Rarely do people see unicorns. Never do you see the same unicorn twice. Three times is for fools. No one sees the same unicorn three times. 

 

There is a cat named nothing with him now. It’s one thing he has left over from Keith; despite all their time together, all he has is his arm, a kiss on his collarbone, and the cat. 

 

He lingered near the ruins of Allura’s house, waiting to see if the unicorn would erupt from the ground perhaps, until Allura and Pidge and even Matt came back to find him frantic and wild. 

 

“He’s gone,” Shiro explained, all in a rush to their flash-frozen faces; “He’s gone, and he’s not coming back.”

 

Only Allura knew what he felt, and scratched her nails through the short hair on his scalp as he cried out his heart on her shoulder. 

 

The cat had been hiding in a box of potions and came out permanently stained, but it came out regardless, and smashed its face onto any part of Shiro it could reach. 

 

He took them all to Lance and Hunk’s paper suburbs, miraculously surviving yet another overthrow of earth; they had tea on hand, and cats from their crazy neighbor. 

 

“How are you holding up?” Hunk asked one night, pulling him aside, a difficult task in such a crowded house. 

 

Shiro gave him a weak smile. “I’m sad. A little empty. But I will be okay at the end of it all.”

 

“The unicorn isn’t dead. Unicorns don’t die.”

 

Shiro couldn’t help but feel something like hope creep up on him. “Really?”

 

“Yeah. He’s not dead—sleeping, maybe. You’re going to look for him, aren’t you?”

 

Shiro nodded. He felt an odd mixture of shame and unabashed hope; his unicorn was out there somewhere, somewhere in the deep, green forest, and Shiro would get him back. 

 

Hunk pulled him into a hug. Shiro didn’t know what to do with his new arm, and ended up holding Hunk’s shoulder. 

 

“You’ll be okay,” Hunk said, with his earnest and sincere voice. 

 

Shiro left them all, and now he wanders. 

 

Keith is in the coursing of the wind through the trees, the dappled shade of the leaves on the forest floor, the crawling of the mice and birds and cats on their foraging, the ripening of berries in the summer, the soft fall of snow in winter, the sound of a tree falling with no one around—he is all of that, and more. That is his name, after all. Forest. 

 

Maybe Shiro will stumble upon the unicorn sleeping in the dawn’s golden shadows, where the night creatures fall into their beds. Maybe Shiro will find the unicorn at the moment he decides to give up. Maybe Shiro will never see his unicorn again. 

 

Maybe. Maybe never. But there is still a hope to contend with. 

 

Early on a dew-covered morning, a knight of a far distant land and time begins his search anew.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, guys
> 
> So this is a gift for [Sheith Bouquet](http://asiana-airlines.tumblr.com/>asiana-airlines%20\(aka%20Loris\)</a>%20for%20the%20<a%20href=) event. The word count minimum is 1k. I... may have gone a little overboard. I barely know what happened myself, the words kind of spilled out. If you liked reading this, please reblog the link I'm going to put on my [tumblr](https://spinstersgrave.tumblr.com/) for this fic if you have a tumblr yourself and feel comfortable reblogging this. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are my lifeblood y'all don't be afraid to dish 'em out; any and all questions will be answered to the best of my ability


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